The University of Maine women’s basketball team dug itself a 16-point hole in the first quarter of the Tulane Holiday Tournament championship game against host Tulane on Thursday afternoon in New Orleans.
The Black Bears rallied valiantly and had a chance to tie it with 5.5 seconds remaining but graduate student guard Anne Simon missed the second of three free throws and Tulane held on for a 64-61 victory.
Simon was fouled by Kyren Whittington while attempting a game-tying 3-pointer with 5.5 seconds left.
She made the first foul shot to cut the lead to 63-61 but missed the second.
She purposely missed the third to give her Black Bears a chance to grab the offensive rebound but Tulane’s Marta Galic grabbed the rebound and Tulane called a timeout, which enabled the Green Wave to advance the ball to midcourt.
Irina Parau was fouled and made one free throw with three seconds left to sew up the win.
Tulane improved to 7-4, including a 6-1 mark at its Avron B. Fogelman Arena, while UMaine fell to 7-6.
Junior guard Whittington and graduate student guard Galic paced the Green Wave with 19 and 18 points, respectively. Whittington also had four steals and three assists while Galic had eight rebounds and two assists.
Graduate student forward Hannah Pratt produced 10 points and seven rebounds, graduate student guard Kaylah Rainey had eight points and a game-high nine assists, and senior forward Parau had a game-high 11 rebounds to go with five points.
For UMaine, junior forward Adi Smith poured in a game-high 25 points and also registered five assists and four rebounds. Simon finished with 18 points, nine rebounds, four steals and three assists despite playing the entire fourth quarter with four fouls.
Senior guard-forward Caroline Bornemann had eight points, four rebounds and two assists. No other Black Bear had more than four points.
“You can’t dig yourselves a hole that deep,” said UMaine head coach Amy Vachon to Black Bear Sports Properties/Van Wagner play-by-play man Don Shields. “I was proud of the way we fought back. We showed our resiliency again. We shot the ball well but didn’t defend for the first three quarters, especially the first quarter.”
The Black Bears never led in the game.
The Green Wave scored the game’s first seven points and built the lead to 21-5 with 1:11 left in the first period.
UMaine clawed away but couldn’t get any closer than seven and entered the fourth period trailing 53-43.
UMaine rattled off a 6-1 spurt to begin the fourth quarter to cut the lead to five with Smith scoring all six points inside the paint.
Smith’s layup with 4:50 remaining and Simon’s 3-pointer 1:29 later pulled the Black Bears within two.
Pratt’s 3-pointer restored the five-point lead with 2:06 to go but Smith answered 14 seconds later with another layup.
Whittington and Bornemann swapped baskets before Simon was eventually fouled with 5.5 seconds remaining.
“It was a good game. We just needed to finish it out,” Vachon said. “They’re a good team, an experienced team with a lot of graduate transfers.”
Tulane shot 44.1 percent from the floor and had 10 3-pointers in 28 attempts compared with UMaine’s 44.4 percent showing from the floor and 6-for-17 performance from long distance.
The Green Wave outrebounded the Black Bears 35-25.
UMaine will play its last non-conference game on Saturday, Dec. 30, when it travels to take on the University of Pennsylvania.
Tulane, which played in the WNIT a year ago, will open American Athletic Conference play at Wichita State on Dec. 30 at 3 p.m.